A factor of import
by Will, 30 June 2008
Mbeki’s younger brother, Moeletsi, 62, who worked for nine years in the 1980s as a journalist in Zimbabwe, says the alliance between the two men springs more from a political than a personal affinity: Both Mugabe and Mbeki view the trade union movement as a common threat.
Mugabe’s nemesis, Tsvangirai, is a former trade union leader. And Thabo Mbeki, whose fiscally conservative economic policies alienated the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions, lost the leadership of the African National Congress last year to Jacob Zuma, who had the unions’ backing.
Thabo Mbeki and Mugabe are both British-educated politicians who feel they were trained to govern, Moeletsi Mbeki said, arguing that Mugabe sees Tsvangirai, who never attended college, as “the riffraff.”
“It’s a class thing,” he said. “The same with my brother: master’s from Sussex.”
Moeletsi Mbeki, a frequent critic of his brother, said he believed South Africa’s protection of Mugabe - the blind eye to rigged elections, the shielding from international censure - would probably end if Zuma became president next year, as expected, “not because of Zuma,” but because the unions’ “will demand it stop.”
Monday 30 June 2008 at 18:04
Shame on South Africa. What are the chances of Jacob Zuma and Mandela putting pressure on Mbeki before next year’s elections? Power to the unions.
The class aspect is very interesting, and ignored by most of the press. Must say that no-one I’ve ever met with a degree from Sussex has thought of themselves as above ‘the riff-raff’, and the labour movement has traditionally been strong there. Further, Mugabe’s ‘British’ education was received without setting foot in the country, coming entirely through distance learning programmes. Military training usually increases delusions of power though, and Mbeki received plenty of this from Brezhnev in the Soviet Union of the 1970s.
Tuesday 1 July 2008 at 21:25
A great post, which sums up how I view a lot of ‘post-colonial’ leaders, from Michael Collins to Ghandi.
Their only problem with the class system is the racism that kept them out of the golf club. Fair enough, but don’t give us a load of w**k about ’socialism’ eh guys?
What has driven most of these revolutions is not proletariat destiny, but frustrated local middle-classes- the coming to power of the local-born, British educated civil servants.
The sheer nakedness of their thuggery notwithstading, what Rhubabwe & Mbeki remind me of is the British labour party elite of the 1970s. Supposed to be building Jerusalem, but they couldn’t resist the priveleges that they had railed against, first as Grammar Scool oiks and then as beneficiaries of free university education.
It all imploded under sunny Jim ‘crisis, what crisis?’ Callaghan in 1979, as they tried in vain to find a ‘third way’ between capatalismn & socialism. One that would provide a welfare safety net for all, but would still allow the likes of them to rise to the top, where they so obviously felt they belonged. A fair christian socialist values place that could still put the boot in to uppity natives when it needed to, & side with the Yanks on everything.
The grammar school boys self-righteous sense of entitlement was even greater than that of the tory ruling class. For all their bluster about ‘breeding, doncha know old chap’, deep down the tories always knew that they were only there because they fell out of the right womb. The grammatoctracy paved the way for Thatcherism with their ingrained belief that they had earned their place at the top through talent & hard work.